Chasing the Sunset

by Barbara Mack

  Maggie caught her breath when she saw her uncle. She was stunned at how still Ned was, at how old and thin he looked. Without his usual animation, he seemed so frail and elderly, and Maggie had never thought of him that way at all. With a pang, she realized that Ned was sixty-one. Sixty-one! If he survived this, he did not have that many years left, and her face twisted with fear. Please, let him be all right, she prayed silently. Let him have all of the years that he has coming to him. Let him live so that I can tell him that I love him once more.

  Joanne looked up from her place beside Ned in the back of the wagon, and smiled reassuringly. Ronald squeezed her shoulder and tossed a blanket around her. They all huddled around Ned, sharing their body heat with him. He was cold, so cold to her touch. His head was in Joanne’s lap, and he was covered with what seemed like every blanket that Nick owned. Joanne’s arms were underneath the blankets, and she looked up at Maggie now and told her what she was doing.

  “I am holding a compress on his shoulder, but it is hardly bleeding right now. I am afraid that once he warms up it will start again, so one of us needs to continue holding pressure on this bandage until we get him there.”

  “Go, Nick,” Ronald said urgently. “We are all settled back here. Get us there, quickly.”

  Nick took them on the ride of a lifetime. At any other time, Maggie would have enjoyed it, would have loved the sharp wind that glazed her flesh with numbness, would have loved the way they flew down the poorly kept up road, the wagon careening on two wheels at times, bouncing and rocking back and forth. Now, she was just stricken with fear for Ned, unable to enjoy anything. She tucked the blankets more securely around Ned, taking over the pressure on his wound from Joanne, staring intently into her uncle’s still face and looking for some sign of life and shivering when she found none. She laid her fingers aside the pulse in his neck and was relieved to feel it thump under her fingertips, thready but there.

  “Did he say anything?” she asked. “Does anyone know what happened?”

  “He has never regained consciousness after Nick found him,” Ronald said gently. “When Nick woke me after carrying Ned into the sitting room, I stayed with him the whole time, only leaving when Joanne took over for me while I got blankets and cloaks. He has said nothing.”

  The trip to the surgery seemed to take a lifetime. Tommy paced back and forth in front of the small building, waiting for them, and then Duncan and Doctor Fell were there with a stretcher. They transferred Ned gently, then all but ran him into the building, talking swiftly in language that was incomprehensible to her.

  She paced the waiting room, not feeling the cold, staring unseeingly out the small window. Nick pressed a warm cup of coffee into her cold fingers.

  “Drink,” he said. “I put some whiskey in it. You need it,” he said sternly. “Come and sit beside me and drink it all down.”

  Numbly, Maggie went with him. She sat down and drained the cup without comment, letting it dangle empty from her fingers as she contemplated her toes. It was an eternity before Duncan came back into the room, still wearing a bloody apron. Maggie could not ask the question that trembled on her lips. She opened her trembling mouth, and then shut it again without saying a word. She was afraid of the answer, and for the first time since Nick had awakened her, tears came to her eyes and ran down her frozen cheeks. She stared at Duncan, mute and prayerful, too focused on what he had to say to even wipe them away.

  “He is going to be all right,” he said wearily. “We pulled two bullets out of his shoulder, and I do not think they did any major damage there. He was lucky. It should heal up as good as new. The worst thing is all the blood that he has lost, and the fact that he lay there for a while before anyone found him. He has some mild frostbite on his chin and the top of one ear, but that is all; I suspect from all the red dog hair on his collar that Sadie was curled around his head, and that kept it from being worse. He is in bad shape right now, but overall Ned is healthy and in good physical condition for his age, and with good care and a little luck, he should do all right. I want to keep him here for at least a week with around the clock care, where we can keep an eye on him. It is all a matter of prayer now.”

  Duncan looked over at Nick. Maggie sat down heavily and began wailing tears of relief, and Nick hugged her to him with one arm.

  "It will be all right, Maggie," he said softly. "I promise you, it will be."

  “I want to see him,” Maggie said, her face white. “I want to sit beside him for a while.”

  Duncan escorted her to Ned’s bedside where she grasped his still hand in hers and brought it to her face. He found himself blinking back tears at the poignant sight.

  “I am here, Uncle Ned,” she whispered softly. “I will not leave you.”

  Duncan pulled her up a chair beside Ned’s bed and settled her in it before pulling Nick out into the hallway and closing the door behind them. He made sure that they were several feet away from the door before he spoke, to reduce the chances of Maggie hearing them.

  “Any ideas what happened?” he asked, rubbing his face, fatigued both from the rude awakening Tommy had given him, and from the surgery. Damn, but he hated taking bullets out of a man; especially old Ned, who he was very fond of.

  “None,” said Nick grimly. “The best guess I can make is that he surprised someone in the stables, maybe a horse thief . . . only there are no horses missing. Maybe he scared them off, I do not know. It is very strange. I am going to speak to Sheriff Vanderiest now and see what he thinks.”

  “I pulled two bullets out of his shoulder,” Duncan said. “If one of them had gone just a fraction down and to the left, he would be dead. Nick, if they were there to steal horses . . . I do not know why a thief would shoot him twice.”

  Nick told him about the suspected dog bite and asked him to keep an eye out for any such injury, and to let the sheriff know if he came across any. Then he forced himself out into the bitter cold, telling his cousins to wait there in the surgery, and that he would come back for them.

  The sun had been up for only a little less than an hour, and it was a clear, beautiful day already in the way that only cold days can be, as if somehow the cold makes the light from the sun glow brighter. Nick squinted against the blinding rays and hunched his shoulders against the chill.

  The sheriff was not very much help; he scratched his balding head and spit tobacco at the urn by the door, and Nick winced when he missed by nearly a foot. That was a common occurrence, judging by the state of the floor around the spittoon. But however terrible his manners were, and however much the sheriff tried to look like an ignorant hillbilly, the illusion was ultimately doomed to failure. The sheriff was not polished, it was true, and he had absolutely no refinement, but no one spending more than five minutes in the man’s company could mistake him for anything but what he was—a highly intelligent, tenacious bulldog of a man. Nick had dealt with him before, and he liked him quite a lot. The man had integrity. If the sheriff told you that it was so, then it was most certainly so.

  “Wall, Nick,” he said now. “I cannot figger why anyone would shoot Ned? You say there was no robbery, and no horses missin’?”

  When Nick affirmed this, the sheriff agreed with Nick’s assessment of the situation; Ned must have surprised someone in the act as they intended to take a horse. Until Ned woke up, guess was all that they could do. The sheriff sent a deputy out to study the scene at the stable, and Nick told him about the dog bite he suspected the would-be thief had taken. The sheriff laughed heartily at the idea of three-legged, gentle Sadie taking a bite out of anyone; he owned three of her pups himself, and while they were all good trackers, like their mother they had not more than an ounce of aggression in their whole bodies.

  “Just keep an eye out,” said the sheriff, shaking the hand that Nick proffered. “Put a guard on the stables in case whoever it was comes back.”

  Nick was walking back to the surgery when he realized they had not left word for Kathleen, and that she was going to beat t
hem there, to an empty house and a bloodstained parlor. The deputy was on his way, but Kathleen was bound to be ready to murder him when she saw him next. He took off at a fast run for the building where Duncan and Doctor Fell kept their offices and small surgery.

  Maggie could barely be pried away from Ned’s bedside where she still sat holding one of his hands. The only thing that coaxed her into going back to the farm was hearing from Duncan that Ned would probably not wake up for three or four more hours due to the medicine he had given him. Nick promised to bring her right back, after she changed clothes, ate something and rested for at least an hour. This last was said sternly, with one eyebrow raised imperiously, and Maggie reluctantly agreed. She knew if she did not do as he asked he was quite capable of throwing her over his shoulder and making her leave, and Duncan would probably help him.

  Nick borrowed a closed carriage from Doctor Fell. No sense in all of us suffering, he told

  them. He had the Doctor keep the horse Tommy had ridden into town on, too. He would send someone for the horse and wagon, and to return the carriage, he said.

  “Glad to do it,” Doctor Fell said gruffly. “I do not want to have the rest of you back as patients tomorrow, and that might happen if you do not stay out of the wind.” He threw Nick a sympathetic look. “I have got a coachman’s coat around somewhere. It was left here last winter, and I never got around to throwing it out. Good thing for you, too.”

  As they stepped out the door, it began to snow. Maggie put her face up to sky, feeling the biting kiss of the weather on her warm cheeks. She smiled, and stuck out her tongue to taste the snowflakes. The cold, wet flakes felt good in her dry mouth, and she realized with a sense of astonishment that she was quite thirsty, and hungry, too. She wondered how she could still feel these mundane things while her uncle lay near death in the building behind her.

  “I will have you home soon, and you can get some coffee and hot food inside you,” Nick said from behind her almost as if he had heard her thoughts. Maggie turned to look at him, swathed in the many-layered coat, and she felt a rush of love for him that had her swaying dizzily. “No sense in you getting sick. Ned would not care for that, matter of fact he would be downright angry with you if you did not take care of yourself while he was down.”

  Maggie leaned on his strong arm briefly when he handed her up into the coach. His arms closed around her for much too short of a time in a hard hug, then he released her gently, pushing her into the seat beside Joanne. Ronald and Tommy huddled on the other side.

  “Sit close together,” he ordered. “Cover up with this blanket and share your heat. It is better that way.”

  Maggie’s brows drew together. Nick would be out in the weather all the way home, with no one to relieve him, and he was worried about them.

  “We will be warm enough in here,” she said. “What about you?”

  “I will help drive the team,” Tommy said. “I do not want you to be out there alone.”

  “No, you will not. You near got frostbite on the way here and there is no sense in both of us freezing. Stay in the carriage. This coat is made of wool and lined with fur, and it is so heavy I can barely walk. It will keep me warm enough. If I needed help, I would say so, but I will be all right.” Nick pushed Tommy firmly back onto the seat and gave him a quelling look that had him subsiding even as the boy started his argument back up again. “I will be fine. Don’t you worry,” he said. “I am going to race for home like my tail was on fire. I do not want to spend a minute more up on this box than I have to. If I think the cold is getting to me, I will stop and let you drive for a little while, and I will get warm inside the carriage before I go back on top.”

  Guilty as she felt about him stuck out in the cold, Maggie’s eyes still drifted shut and her cheek sought the warmth of Joanne’s shoulder. Asleep in less than two minutes in the rocking of the carriage, she never felt the hand that smoothed down her hair and made room to lie her down on the leather. Exhausted from very little sleep the night before and from the emotional upset that had drained so much of her energy, she slept right through the whole ride, not waking up until Nick pulled her from the vehicle to carry her indoors.

  Arms curled around his neck, she pressed her face to his neck, then pulled back with a cry of shock. He was freezing cold, so cold that his skin had almost seemed to burn her lips when she had went to him seeking warmth.

  “My goodness, Nick,” she said. “You need to get into the house and sit in front of a fire and drink something hot. Put me down,” she commanded. “I need to get in there and tell Kathleen to put some water on for coffee. I think I will put something a little stronger in it, too.”

  Nick smiled down into her face. “You went from sound asleep to wide awake in less than

  two seconds. I have never seen that happen before,” he said dryly as he put her on her feet, unaware that Joanne was standing very close to him and gave him an assessing glance as he spoke. A smile lit her features after a moment, and she shared a conspiratorial look with her brother.

  “It is the cold,” Maggie said briskly. “Shocked the sleep right out of me.”

  At that very moment, the front door flew open and Kathleen bellowed down at them:

  “Get in here, you idiots! Nicholas Revelle, you are a dead man! I have already sent Roger down to take care of the horses, and he can just come back up here and take care of these, too. Tommy, you run down and get him and tell him to hurry it up. I had to kick him out of my nice warm kitchen where he has been lazing about all morning, but he went. I have got brownies and hot chocolate and coffee,” she said as she practically shoved them all in the door. She pulled Nick down to eye level by the collar of his borrowed coat, getting him nose to nose with her. “Next time you leave me to wonder if you are all dead for an hour before someone shows up to tell me what happened, I will personally stab you through the heart myself. The front door was standing wide open and I nearly went mad until the deputy showed up to tell me what was going on.”

  “I was not thinking much about letter writing at that moment, Kathleen,” he said wryly as she divested him of his coat and shoved him into a chair. A brownie the size of a saucer followed next, along with hot chocolate topped with a heaping spoonful of whipped cream and sprinkled cinnamon.

  She demanded news of Ned, and put a hand to her mouth when they gave it to her. Then she began to chew on Nick’s hide once again. Tommy crept in quietly, and the rest of them wisely kept silent as Kathleen ranted and raved and put enough desserts and sweets on the table for a small army, slamming cups and saucers around and walking swiftly back and forth. They all studied the bounteous offering, and each knew immediately what she had been doing to stave off her worry. They would be eating these for a week or better. Nick knew that berating him was just her way of blowing off steam, and he stood it in silence, then waited until she dashed by once more and snaked an arm around her waist, pulling her close.

  “I love you, too, Kathleen,” he said. “I am sorry I worried you.”

  She put her head on his shoulder and bawled out every minute of excruciating anxiety that she’d had that morning. She cried out every last tear she had in her body onto his shoulder, her arms pressing him tight. Nick held her in his lap and rocked her, laying his cheek against her bright head of hair.

  Maggie was struck in the heart by the amused, tender expression on his face. He patted Kathleen, and murmured, and Maggie felt weak tears rise in her eyes at the sight. He was so compassionate and caring. It was no wonder that she loved him.

  Kathleen raised her wet face from his shoulder with a hiccup, wiping tears away from her reddened eyes. Her nose was nearly as bright as the three cherry pies she had baked, and Nick told her so.

  “Three?” Kathleen laughed shakily. “There are three more in the pantry, and I have not even mentioned the berry cobbler and the two cakes I have hidden behind them.”

  Maggie burst out laughing, and Kathleen threw her hands up in the air.

  “Let me go, Nick,�
�� she demanded. “I have got to get everything ready to go. I know Maggie is going to want to go back to Geddes, and I am going with her when she does. You can just send someone over to the farm to tell my parents,” she said firmly, before Nick could even get his mouth open. “I am not letting her go alone. You can come out later when you get things squared away. Maggie and I will be staying with my Aunt Agnes for the next few days.”

  She hauled Maggie to her feet. “You do not have all that much time, Maggie. Pack a bag with whatever you think you will need for three or four days. I will have Roger hitch a fresh team to that carriage and tell Charlie to drive us into town.” She stopped, having already pushed Maggie out the door and towards the stairs, and pointed to Tommy. “No, you go tell Roger and Charlie. I can put together a basket of food and a couple of flasks of hot drinks while I wait for Maggie.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Tommy said, and scooted for the door. Kathleen’s yell brought him back.

  “Your coat!” she scolded. “Put a coat on, it is freezing out there.”

  The three left at the table exchanged looks that spoke volumes. Lanny Donaldson’s legacy to her daughter was an iron will and an ability to give orders like a small general. And like her mother, she expected her orders to be carried out now. Kathleen had her hands on her hips, scowling at Nick before he noticed.

  “What are you grinning about?” she said.

  “Nothing,” he said innocently. He stooped and pressed a kiss to her cheek, and she flushed in surprise.

  “Pack some of those desserts up,” he teased. “Then Doctor Murdoch will finally be able to tell what your cooking is like, instead of your mother’s.”

  He laughed when she took a swat at him, and dodged on out the door. He took the steps two at a time and met Maggie just as she shut her bedroom door.

  “Do not worry,” he told her quietly, and took her carpet bag from her to carry out to the carriage. “Ned will be all right. He has got good doctors, and you and Kathleen will be right there.” He grinned at her. “And if I know Kathleen, and I do, she will nag Ned until he hurries up and gets well enough to go back to work, just to get away from her.”